Re: What is analysis?

Quoth David Cressey:
> I'm hesitant to offer a definition off the top of my head, because it will
> surely be torn apart by the usual gang of vultures.

I'll have a go, then: Analysis is taking something apart (to see how it works). Whereas design is putting something together (to make it work). :)

> In the meantime, I'd
> like to hear from everybody with a degree in software engineering. Did you
> ever take a course on analysis? Or, alternatively, did you ever take a
> course on methodologies that put a strong emphasis on analysis?

No. Nothing that covered analysis /thoroughly/, at least, and certainly not /formally/. I've learned a few diagramming notations in my time, but I've never had analysis presented as a science as opposed to an art or craft.

> Have any of you ever undertaken a large scale database design project
> without doing any formal analysis, or just by writing down the requirements
> in a doc? What happened after that? I'm not talking about a little
> database with 20 or 30 columns. I'm talking a database with upwards of 300
> columns and a good number of tables.

I have a database of currently 102 relvars with in total 590 attributes. No formal analysis, whatever that means. I drew some pictures in the beginning for communication, but once I had a prototype, it was simpler to just show, tell and ask. People understand tables just fine. What do you mean, "What happened after that?"

-- 
Jon